Claudio Monteverdi was employed by Victor Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua, but was dismissed from the court when his son Francesco Gonzaga took title in 1612. Monteverdi moved to Venice to take up the appointment of Director of Music at St Mark’s Basilica.

The first piece at this afternoon concert, in the beautifully restored Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall in the School of Music at Leeds University, dated from 2004: the song-cycle In Praise of Dreams, four poems by the Nobel prize-winning Wisława Szymborska translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, composed by Birmingham-based Joe Cutler.